Could It Be? Could It Be?!?! It IS!!! It’s… Another Episode of Winners and Losers (This Time from the February 25 GOP Debate)

WINNERS:

Men incapable of convincingly masking the ravages of male-pattern baldness: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and now Marco Rubio were repping hard, hard, hard for this underserved constituency

Ben Carson: Somehow the most charming and likable of the remaining candidates

Wolf Blitzer: Made the most of CNN’s tenure offer, putting in the debate-moderator equivalent of a professor showing up to lecture an hour late, unaware that he is fully nude

Ted Cruz: Honestly, it’s kind of adorable how he still thinks a man who considers Chief Justice John Roberts a liberal traitor has enough crossover appeal to win a general election

Donald Trump: Any attempt to rebuff his ludicrous statements, no matter how blatantly false and disrespectful—Disrespectful? You want to talk disrespectful?—See, there he goes again! He can’t resist butting in—Oh, I can’t resist? How about that time you couldn’t resist letting Obamacare pass?—Donald, this is completely ridiculous! You can’t do this—Yes I can! Yes I can, and I will, because I’m the only guy in this race who—Oh, for crying out loud! Come on, somebody, put a stop to this! [We pan over to the moderators’ desk. Wolf Blitzer is holding his foot to his mouth and gnawing on one of his toenails. Hugh Hewitt is slumped over, still crying softly over Trump’s jab about his radio show’s low ratings. Maria Celeste Arras has long since lost patience and left.]

LOSERS:

Marco Rubio: Appeared increasingly desperate onstage, and not just to cover his scalp

New Jersey: Not content with trashing the state as its governor, Chris Christie aims to secure its continued decline by endorsing Donald Trump

The Republican Party: For all that talk of a vast, deep talent pool, their hopes of halting the nomination of Donald Trump now lie in the hands of a malfunctioning replicant, Canadian Satan, Milton from Office Space, and John Kasich

The Democratic Party: Don’t think you can wriggle out of this one, Democrats. Your great young progressive hope is a 74-year-old college freshman, while the safe bet is an unquestionably intelligent and extraordinarily qualified woman who, partly through her own doing but also through the same failure of party apparatus that allowed misinformation about Barack Obama and his policies to spread even before he took office, has cultivated a possibly fateful aura of unease and distrust

Young progressive leaders: srsly tho even Elizabeth Warren is 66

Looking away from this goddamn circus for even a moment: Apparently Ben Carson said “The fruit salad of their life” onstage, and I MISSED IT